In the aftermath of the 1953 coup d’etat, the government of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi embraced oil exports as an important source of economic and political power. Revenues derived from oil exports allowed the shah to fund a military build-up, an expansion of the central state apparatus, and an ambitious slate of economic development programs. But changes in the global oil system, linked with rising resource nationalism and the emergence of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1960, threatened to complicate Iran’s place in the international energy order. Moreover, the shah himself was torn over how to manage his own oil ambitions—whether to work with the international oil companies and maximize Iran’s oil production, or strike out on an independent path in order to seize the mantle of “petro-nationalist” away from his former adversary, nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. This paper examines Iran’s evolving place in the global oil order between 1953 and 1965, drawing on the diaries of Pahlavi officials, diplomatic documents gleaned from US, British, and oil company archives. It emphasizes the divisions within the shah’s own governments, as varying factions led by OPEC secretary general Fuad Ruhani and Prime Minister Asadollah ‘Alam clashed over policy.The paper illustrates how the history of Iran cannot be separated from the history of the international fossil fuel economy.

Ties that bound the communist parties in Iran and the Arab world to the Soviet Union have been subject of much study but what of the relations between these parties inside the Middle East? This paper presents an overview of the strong alliance between the Iranian and Iraqi communists, respectively organized in the Tudeh Party of Iran and the Iraqi Communist Party. The first major iteration of the alliance showed itself in the 1940s in the Arab-majority province of Khuzestan in Iran where the oil workers organized by Tudeh Party and supported by the Iraqi communists came up against the British owners of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and their allies in Baghdad and local Arab tribes in Iran. The relationship between the two parties was multi-faceted and expressed itself on political, intellectual and practical grounds. It also included moments of disagreements like the Zionist question to which the Iranian and Arab communists had sharply different approaches and over which they continued` to debate for years (Both Tudeh and ICP boasted a large Jewish membership, some of whom came from inter-linked Jewish communities that cut across the border). The paper offers a broad framework for the study of the alliance between the two parties but focuses on moments where the relationship had a major role such as the communist-supported Iraqi revolution of 1958 which helped Tudeh organize a base in Baghdad; the anti-communist Iraqi coup of 1963 which led to Tudeh networks in the USSR helping to smuggle Iraqi communists to safety; and the 1980 when Iranian and Iraqi communists stood together even as their two nations became engaged in a deadly war that was a major disappointment for the proponents of Third World solidarity. The paper bases itself on archival material and printed press from Iraq, Iran, US and the UK. Defying the Moscow-focused narratives on communist history, it will attempt to show relations between the communist parties in the global south could at least be as important as their ties to the ‘Big Brother’ in Moscow.

In April 1921, a young American woman named Lydia Molavi shot and killed her 26-year-old Iranian husband, Abdul Hussein Molavi, in their apartment in Washington, D.C. The sensational case drew media attention in the American capital and concerned U.S. and Iranian diplomats, particularly when Lydia Molavi was acquitted of second degree murder in January 1922. As late as early 1925, Iranian diplomats and Iran’s Majles (parliament) protested the case’s outcome. This paper is drawn from a larger study of American-Iranian relations during the first half of the 20th century, and it is based on U.S.-Iran diplomatic exchanges, newspaper articles, and other sources. It examines the Molavi murder case through an unorthodox combination of analytic lenses – diplomacy, gender and women, culture, religion, and race – to advance two arguments. First, when viewed from multiple angles, seemingly minor ground-level events like the Molavi case can actually reveal much about early American-Iranian relations, from directly impacting the two governments’ diplomatic relationship to illustrating the developing power imbalance between the two nations to illuminating how Americans and Iranians saw one another in the 1920s. Second, to provide a more complete picture of foreign relations between the U.S. and Iran – or between any two countries – historians must combine analytic lenses rather than rely primarily upon a single methodological approach and thus should analyze official state-to-state relations alongside the roles played by non-state actors, culture, and other factors. Indeed, marriage is the most intimate form of foreign relations. Marriages between Americans and Iranians were a microcosm of and contributed to the broader relationship between the two countries, and this paper makes the case that historians should devote more attention to close personal relationships that crossed national boundaries as an important facet of the history of U.S.-Iran relations.

This research examines the activities of the Tudeh Party in Britain, touching upon their sense of isolation and loss after the 1979 revolution. While many party members found themselves in exile in mainland Europe, some found refuge in the United Kingdom. From this island of relative tolerance and democratic freedom, the party found a platform from which they could establish connections with the British Left and promote their causes. This study hopes to deepen our knowledge of the Tudeh and to move away from the common narrative that it was Soviet-controlled or anti-Iranian. In order to understand this complex party, key research questions will be addressed, namely which causes were chosen and why; why certain imagery and language were used; what was the nature of the Tudeh’s relationship with the British Left, and to what extent it kept its Iranian identity while in exile. The Tudeh in Britain found itself in a decade of great change. Britain in the 1980s was characterised by the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Privatisation, strikes, the abandonment of workers’ rights all contributed to the tense political atmosphere in Britain at the time. In Europe, the Iron Curtain was crumbling down and the Eastern bloc was cracking from within. In Iran, chaos reigned with the war with Iraq raging for the entire decade, while the violent suppression of the Left irreparably broke the movement. In this study, their effects will be examined in light of the Tudeh’s own struggles in exile. Furthermore, it will be shown that the Tudeh’s focus on workers, women’s rights and promotion of an international communist struggle, all resonated in Britain. The sense of solidarity and connection between the British and Iranian Left provide fascinating insight into the Tudeh’s international appeal. While much research exists on the Tudeh in Iran, this paper will shed unique light on the English-language activism of the party. This research will bring new comprehension of the party in exile. The Tudeh in Britain produced a huge body of work throughout the 1970s and 1980s in English that reveal the activism the party undertook in the UK. My research draws upon the material gathered from the People’s Museum in Manchester hold a wealth of material from the Tudeh. Additional material is sourced from the National Archives in order to understand the attitude of the British government towards the party.